Vasudev Balwant Phadke

The Story

A clerk in the military accounts office, Phadke had learned several languages and studied of Bhārat military science. When the terrible famine of 1876–77 devastated the Deccan and the British continued to export grain while peasants starved, Phadke left his job, gathered a band of Ramoshi fighters, and declared war on the colonial state.

His small army raided treasuries, attacked police stations, and seized grain to feed the starving — a Robin Hood of the Deccan who moved through the hills with such daring that the British feared a general uprising. He was influenced by the ideas of Swaraj and dreamed of a free Bhārat raised by the peasant masses.

Betrayed and captured in 1879, he was sentenced to transportation for life and exiled to Aden. He died there in 1883, but his memory lit the way — later revolutionaries, including the Chapekars and Savarkar, acknowledged him as their pioneer. He is the bridge between the 1857 uprising and the revolutionary age that followed.